I was stationed at Ft Sam Houston TX which is actually in San Antonio, in 1973. It was swarming with crickets even then. At night I’d walk down the sidewalks to the sounds of crickets being squashed. The fire ants built their mounds right along the sidewalks because they knew that every night they got free meals. There were even swarms of crickets that lived in the ceilings of the barracks. Lift a ceiling panel and you’d get a bunch of crickets falling out.
I always figured that the lizard population had been dramatically reduced.
We had an infestation of frogs one year so bad that the smell would make you gag from driving over the dead bodies.........